PostgreSQL was designed to run on UNIX-like platforms. However, PostgreSQL was then also designed to be portable so that it could run on various platforms such as Mac OS X, Solaris, and Windows. PostgreSQL is free and open source software. Its source code is available under PostgreSQL license, a liberal open source license. You are free to use, modify and distribute PostgreSQL in any form. PostgreSQL requires very minimum maintained efforts because of its stability. Therefore, if you develop applications based on PostgreSQL, the total cost of ownership is low in comparison with other database management systems. In Chapter 2, you will learn: Connecting to a PostgreSQL database – shows you how to setup a simple PHP application structure and connect to a PostgreSQL database; Creating new PostgreSQL database tables – walks you through the steps of creating database tables in PostgreSQL using PHP; Inserting data into PostgresQL tables – guides you how to use insert data into a table using PHP PDO; Updating data in the table – provides you with the steps of updating data in the database tables; Querying data from a table – shows you various ways to query data in the PostgreSQL database from PHP; Performing transactions – explains the transaction concept and shows you how to perform transactions in PHP; Working with the binary large objects (BLOB) – shows you how to insert, select, and delete the large objects in the PostgreSQL using PHP; Calling PostgreSQL stored procedures – explains you the steps of calling PostgreSQL stored procedures from PHP; Deleting data in a PostgreSQL table using PHP PDO – teaches you how to delete data from the PostgreSQL table in the PHP application using PDO. In Chapter 3, you will learn managing table structure and views including postgresql data types, postgresql create table, postgresql select into statement, postgresql create table as, using postgresql serial to create auto-increment column, identity column, alter table, drop table, truncate table, check constraint, not-null constraint, foreign key, primary key, unique constraint, managing postgresql views, creating updatable views, materialized views, creating updatable views using the with check option clause, and recursive view. In Chapter 4, you will learn statements, operators, and clauses including select, order by, select distinct, limit, fetch, in, between, postgresql like, is null, alias, joins, inner join, postgresql left join, self-join, full outer join, cross join, natural join, group by, having, intersect operator, except operator, grouping sets, cube, and rollup. In Chapter 5, you will learn postgresql trigger, aggregate, and string functions including creating the first trigger in postgresql, managing postgresql trigger, aggregate functions, avg function, max function, min function, sum function, postgresql concat function, ascii function, trim function, length function, substring function, regexp_matches function, regexp_replace function, replace function, to_number function, and to_char function.